iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Jocelyn Read

LIGO Scientific Collaboration @ligo.org · 14/09/2026

Happy birthday #GW150914! 11 years ago today, we caught our first gravitational wave, and founded a new type of astronomy A decade later, we now have hundreds of observations! 🔭🧪🎂

Classic plot showing GW150914. Filtered data from LIGO Livingston and LIGO Hanford are shown, both show the characteristic signal of a binary black hole. Crucially, data from the two observatories agree, indicating a real signal.

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Jocelyn Read @jocelynread.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

Whatever you are imagining it was at least that hilarious :D

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Jocelyn Read @jocelynread.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

My kid is currently playing the imperial march on a kazoo.

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Jocelyn Read @jocelynread.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

I see we're sharing our mid eclipse photos 😄

A photo of the partial lunar eclipse, reddish moon with a bright cap to the top left, against a cloudy sky and trees.

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Jocelyn Read @jocelynread.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

The hypermassive short lived neutron star merger remnant from GW170817, because of the *drama* (by which I mean EM counterpart launching)

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Jocelyn Read @jocelynread.bsky.social · 02/08/2026

Family staying at our place at Wasa is evacuating too, was thinking of your folks, hope everyone stays safe.

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Randall Munroe @xkcd.com · 23/06/2026

Side Effect xkcd.com/3261/

5-panel comic. (1) Two people standing, one with a ponytail and the second with white beret] PERSON 2: This new topical medication makes me extra sensitive to sun exposure and gravitational waves. (2) PERSON 1: Oh yeah, that’s a common... wait, what was that last part? PERSON 2: Here comes one now! (3) [Person 2 stretched taller] (4) [Person 2 squished shorter] (5) [Person 2 stretched taller again] PERSON 2: *Wheee!*

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Reposted by Jocelyn Read

LIGO Scientific Collaboration @ligo.org · 13/05/2026

Our latest discoveries—two of the loudest gravitational-wave signals ever: #GW240925 and #GW250207 Using these signals, and our understanding of binary black holes, we can verify that our detectors are correctly calibrated ligo.org/science-summ... 🧪⚛️☄️🔭

The gravitational-wave events GW240924 (top row) and GW250207 (bottom row) as observed by the LIGO Hanford (left column), LIGO Livingston (middle column), and Virgo (right column) observatories. The plots, called spectrograms, show the power spectrum (energy at different frequencies) as a function of time. The signals can be seen as the increase in energy over time (in seconds) and at specific frequencies (in hertz), represented by green and yellow bands. Their shape follows the characteristic chirp pattern produced by gravitational-wave signals. The thickness and brightness of GW250207 shows just how loud it was!

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Reposted by Jocelyn Read

Casey Dreier @caseydreier.bsky.social · 09/04/2026

The FY 2027 NASA budget request hides its science cuts by omitting mission names instead of explicitly zeroing them out. We did the work and found 54 missions cancelled in this proposal. This is another extinction-level event for NASA science. Full list: planetary.org/save-nasa-science

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Reposted by Jocelyn Read

Phil PlAIt @philplait.bsky.social · 06/04/2026

Very cool amateur imaging of Artemis II on its way to the moon by amateur astronomer (and Bad Astronomy Newsletter subscriber!) Ross Cunniff: racunniff.blogspot.com/2026/04/arte...

racunniff.blogspot.com

Artemis II Orion Capsule "Integrity"

On 1 April 2026, the Artemis II mission launched for a crewed trip around the Moon. I had heard that, in the Apollo missions, the spaceship...

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Jocelyn Read @jocelynread.bsky.social · 15/02/2026

I've now worked with a few retired people that came back to enroll in physics classes and do undergrad-Masters research credits at CSUF - one went on and is in his PhD at UC Irvine. There is a cost to enroll here but we rank high as a "best value" college!

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Reposted by Jocelyn Read

ProPublica @propublica.org · 09/02/2026

1/ ProPublica collected handwritten letters in mid-January from children held at the Dilley Immigration Processing Center, the same facility where 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos was taken. Hundreds of kids are still detained. We’ll let the children’s words speak for themselves. 🧵

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Jocelyn Read @jocelynread.bsky.social · 07/02/2026

I'm not sure! Is the mass-energy lost to GW + departing object going to be more than what comes in to induce the perturbation? I'd guess they balance perturbatively but it's tricky business to think about energy in GR when things get nonlinear.

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Jocelyn Read @jocelynread.bsky.social · 07/02/2026

I had *just* updated my ASTR 101 concept question that uses the most distant measured galaxy in its setup....

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Jocelyn Read @jocelynread.bsky.social · 07/02/2026

The mass left over from a NS merger will also be less than the sum of the initial components, but it's a messier estimate than in the BH case - GW and also mass ejecta, with details that depend on physics we don't know completely

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Jocelyn Read @jocelynread.bsky.social · 07/02/2026

GW are going to carry mass-energy away from somewhere, but if the objects are far apart and "post-Newtonian" it's coming from their orbital energy and the inspiral is energy balanced from that. The flyby would have to be very close to talk with the BH spacetime

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Jocelyn Read @jocelynread.bsky.social · 27/12/2025

I was looking at this! I think it might be a good option for inline checks. I'm also looking at text2qti for longer markdown question bank sharing; the format's not exactly the same but probably convertible.

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Jocelyn Read @jocelynread.bsky.social · 26/12/2025

Wishlist: - version control friendly question writing (with images?) - easy conversion and deployment into a public interactive page (markdown?) for sharing and testing - later Canvas import

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Jocelyn Read @jocelynread.bsky.social · 26/12/2025

Next semester, I'll be redeveloping our general-ed Introduction to Astronomy to be asynchronous online. I'm looking to develop lots of little concept checks. But how to write and share them in a usefully shareable #openeducation way?

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LIGO Scientific Collaboration @ligo.org · 15/09/2025

The New York Times shares celebrations of our 10 year anniversary, and the challenges ahead, with memories of Rai Weiss and our clearest detection #GW250114 www.nytimes.com/2025/09/10/s... by Dennis Overbye #GW10Years 🔭 🧪 ⚛️ ☄️

NY Times headline: "Happy Birthday, LIGO. Now Drop Dead. Ten years ago, astronomers made an epic discovery with the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory. Cosmology hasn’t been the same since, and it might not stay that way much longer." Underneath, an artistic representation of two black holes orbiting each other.

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Reposted by Jocelyn Read

LIGO Scientific Collaboration @ligo.org · 26/08/2025

Results from the first part of our fourth LIGO @egovirgo.bsky.social KAGRA observing run are out today! We're pleased to share the largest catalog of gravitational-wave observations with more discoveries of black holes and neutron stars 📰 arxiv.org/abs/2508.18082 🔭🧪⚛️☄️ #GWTC4

New masses in the stellar graveyard plot, showing astronomical observations of black holes and neutron stars. The number of gravitational-wave observations of black holes is overwhelming. The plot is arranged to look nice, the horizontal axis has no meaning, but the vertical one shows masses. We have a significant range of masses from about 1 solar mass to over 200 solar masses for our largest merger remnant. New out today is a neutron star black hole binary GW230518_125908, as well as a lot of binary black holes.

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Jocelyn Read @jocelynread.bsky.social · 25/03/2025

On Sunday April 6, at 1PM Eastern, I'll be giving a public talk via Zoom for the Advanced Studies Gateway at the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams. "Discovering the Universe of Gravitational Waves" will be a general audience talk. You can register at frib.msu.edu/gateway/even...

frib.msu.edu

Jocelyn Read – Discovering the universe of gravitational waves | Facility for Rare Isotope Beams

Jocelyn Read – Discovering the universe of gravitational waves Talk detailsDate: 6 April 20251 p.m. (ET)Location: Zoom (Register for the event here)Talk abstractFrom the speaker:“Gravitational waves a...

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LIGO Scientific Collaboration @ligo.org · 19/03/2025

🎉 We have reached 200 #GravitationalWave candidates in O4! 🎉 The fourth observing run (O4) of our detector network has had the best performance so far, with more candidates than ever before! We are currently busy analysing all these wonderful data and look forward to sharing results #O4IsHere 🔭☄️

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Jocelyn Read @jocelynread.bsky.social · 17/03/2025

Looking forward to seeing all the wonderful science folks have been working on, and seeing so many friends across the scientific community.

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Jocelyn Read @jocelynread.bsky.social · 17/03/2025

And also proud to have contributed to the work that will be presented by Lami Shetu Suleiman at 4:33 in S11: Semi-agnostic Equation of State models for Bayesian inference with Neutron Star observations

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Jocelyn Read @jocelynread.bsky.social · 17/03/2025

I'm proud to have contributed to the work that will be presented by Hsin-yu Chen at 1:45 in R11, on Inference of multi-channel r-process element enrichment in the Milky Way using neutron star merger observations

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Jocelyn Read @jocelynread.bsky.social · 17/03/2025

Poster 276: Jesus J Cortes Barron on using GW to estimate how neutron-star mergers contribute to r-process element Poster 280: Nolan Davis on comparisons of waveform approximants for GW signals

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Jocelyn Read @jocelynread.bsky.social · 17/03/2025

We'll also be sharing posters in H00: Poster 215: Lyla Traylor on building our prior distribution for the high-density neutron star equation of state

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Jocelyn Read @jocelynread.bsky.social · 17/03/2025

From my group: - Emily Wuchner will be discussing measurements of neutron-star tidal parameters at Tuesday at 11:09 Session H20 - Ryan Johnson showing how he can correct for waveform uncertainty in compact binary inference on Tuesday at 2:54 in Session J17.

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Jocelyn Read @jocelynread.bsky.social · 17/03/2025

Back in Southern California for #APSSummit25! Here to support CSUF students and postdocs and other collaborators with some awesome presentations on gravitational-wave astrophysics.

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Reposted by Jocelyn Read

Phil PlAIt @philplait.bsky.social · 08/03/2025

If you have clear skies, Mercury is just 6° below and to the left of Venus (for northern hemisphereans). It was easy to spot with binoculars for me just now! They'll be close for a few more days, too.

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Jocelyn Read @jocelynread.bsky.social · 11/01/2025

I have a Pathfinder book you can borrow if you want to mix it up!

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Jocelyn Read @jocelynread.bsky.social · 04/12/2024

Saw Venus bright in the twilight tonight, with the thin arc of the crescent moon drifting through sunset-pink clouds below. ✨

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Jocelyn Read @jocelynread.bsky.social · 24/11/2024

I'm an astrophysicist working in gravitational-wave astronomy, contributing to the LIGO scientific collaboration and Cosmic Explorer.

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Reposted by Jocelyn Read

Shane Larson @sciencejedi.bsky.social · 24/11/2024

So @jocelynread.bsky.social posted her HS/UG calculator. My undergrad calcs were a folding Casio fx7500g and an HP11c. Still have both. Escalated to an HP48g (thru an HP48sx that died) and STILL use it every day. I won't say if I have several spares in case of failure... Show your #firstCalculator

HP 11C calculator (horizontal, silver and black, black keys with one yellow and one blue key), and a Casio fx7500g calculator (folding model, open to show screen and low pressure sensitive keyboards, with row of white buttons under screen).

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Jocelyn Read @jocelynread.bsky.social · 23/11/2024

Some weekend organizing unearthed my well loved calculator from high school and undergrad! Such a delight to use. It's so lightweight!

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Jocelyn Read @jocelynread.bsky.social · 19/11/2024

I just today had a student ask about using isometric graph scratch paper on a magnetism midterm! Maybe I can have some available for everyone.

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Jocelyn Read @jocelynread.bsky.social · 17/11/2024

I'm teaching introductory electricity and magnetism this semester and Faraday's law must have seemed like such a weird conspiracy of the universe as it was discovered.

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Jocelyn Read @jocelynread.bsky.social · 17/11/2024

Hello bluesky! I'm still figuring out how I want to use this account. What do you want to see more of here?

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